by Joan Smith
WHY
AREN’T THEY
SCREAMING?
Joan Smith
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 1
‘A mistress, that’s all I am,’ John Tracey announced with gloomy satisfaction. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens, her husband always comes first. D’you know, Loretta, she didn’t even come round last week after I’d been to the dentist. She knew I was in agony, but oh no, she said, he’d get suspicious if she suddenly went out on her own in the evening. I mean, she could have said she was nipping out to get some fags, couldn’t she? She only lives round the corner.’
He leaned across the table, grasped the bottle of cheap red wine he’d bought in a nearby off-licence and refilled his glass.
‘It’s no good telling me to give her up,’ he went on, although Loretta hadn’t spoken for some time. Picking up a foil container, he scraped the last few pieces of beef in black-bean sauce on to his plate. ‘You haven’t got any soy sauce, have you, Loretta?’ He pushed the food around with a fork, examining it critically. This looks a bit dry to me.’
Loretta heaved herself out of her chair and knelt in front of one of the kitchen cupboards. There was a bottle of it somewhere, she thought, rummaging among half-empty jars of jam and honey. If only Tracey would finish his meal and go home, she prayed silently, wishing she hadn’t accepted his offer to bring round a Chinese takeaway and cheer her up. His concern for her welfare had been forgotten as soon as he got on to the subject of his current girlfriend, a gym teacher he’d met early one Sunday morning in his local launderette in Brixton. It wasn’t even as if Loretta was hearing his tale of woe for the first time. The affair had been going on for a good three months and she had recently begun to suspect that her ex-husband was relishing his unaccustomed role as the wronged sweetheart. He was still an attractive man: apart from his prematurely grey hair, he had weathered his forty-one years with remarkably little evidence of ageing; his job, as a journalist on a Sunday newspaper, was glamorous enough if you liked that sort of thing. So why couldn’t he find a girlfriend who would appreciate all his sterling qualities?
‘A plaything,’ she heard him say as she finally spotted the soy sauce bottle on its side at the back of the cupboard. ‘She just picks me up and drops me at her own convenience. Oh, thanks, Loretta.’
Tracey spooned more fried rice on to his plate and followed it with a generous sprinkling of soy sauce; Loretta reflected that the vicissitudes of his love life had had no appreciable effect on his appetite. She watched as he emptied the last of the red wine into his glass and held up the bottle hopefully. When she didn’t respond he put it down and peered anxiously at her.
‘You all right? You’re very quiet.’
A potent mixture of irritation and self-pity welled up in Loretta and, to her dismay, she found she was on the verge of tears. Tracey was saved from the stream of bile that was about to pour out by the opportune ringing of the telephone.
‘I’ll get it,’ he said quickly, sensing he’d been reprieved. He got to his feet, seized the receiver and murmured Loretta’s number. Then his face fell.
‘Oh, hello,’ he said off-handedly. ‘Just a minute, I’ll get her. It’s for you,’ he told Loretta unnecessarily. ‘Bridget.’
Loretta took the phone, at once feeling more cheerful.
‘I gather John Tracey is his usual charming self,’ said the voice at the other end of the line. ‘He is one for bearing grudges, isn’t he?’
‘Ye-es,’ said Loretta, suppressing a smile. Tracey had picked up a day-old copy of the Guardian and appeared to be giving it close attention, but she was in no doubt that he was listening. Bridget had been a member of the women’s group Loretta joined when her marriage to Tracey was breaking up, and he persisted in regarding her with the wariness of a flying ant that has just seen one of its number snapped up by a Venus fly-trap.
‘Well, never mind that, are you feeling any better?’ Bridget demanded. ‘Because I think I’ve found the answer to all your problems.’
Loretta stiffened. Bridget’s urge to rescue her women friends from whatever their current predicament happened to be was notorious for leading to awkward situations – she was for ever introducing them to wildly unsuitable men or lending them cars that promptly broke down. In any case, the cause of Loretta’s depression, which she had foolishly recounted to Bridget only that morning, was a particularly intractable problem. Her GP had just announced that the prolonged bout of sore throats, low spirits and general debility she’d recently experienced was probably a mild dose of glandular fever. If Loretta wished to make a speedy recovery, the doctor had said, she must immediately take time off work for a complete rest, preferably well away from London. These instructions, delivered as her third-year students were coming up to their final exams – Loretta lectured in English at London University – could not have come at a worse time. Not only was it difficult to take sick leave at this point in the summer term, but she was also flat broke as the result of expensive repairs to the roof of her flat in Islington.
‘Loretta? Hello? Are you there?’
Bridget’s voice broke into this unhappy reverie. Embarrassed, Loretta apologized for her inattention and asked Bridget to start again from the beginning.
‘I was just saying’, Bridget said patiently, ‘that I’ve got a friend – you are listening, aren’t you?’ Loretta assured her that she was. ‘Well, you know I’ve got a friend called Clara Wolstonecroft, the one who’s a painter?’
Loretta did. Knowing Loretta’s fondness for cats, Bridget had once shown her one of the children’s books Clara wrote and illustrated herself and which featured a couple of beautiful grey cats.
‘Yes, well, I happened to be speaking to Clara last weekend and she mentioned that her tenant was moving out earlier than expected. She’s got a cottage near her house, you see, it used to be the gamekeeper’s cottage in the days people went in for that sort of thing. She lets it out to visiting academics, quite a few of them like the idea of living in the real English countryside and all that.’ Bridget tried, and failed, to put on an American accent for the last phrase. ‘Anyway, she said she was feeling terribly cheerful ‘cause this chap, Wayne something or other, was going home early – he’s been asked to do a lecture tour on Hemingway, if you can believe it – and Clara can’t stand him. So after you rang this morning I suddenly remembered the cottage might be free, and it is. Wayne thing is moving out this Saturday and it’s all yours. If you want it, that is,’ she added hastily. ‘You really should think about it, Loretta, it would do you the world of good to get out of London. And you wouldn’t be completely on your own. You’ll like Clara, and her house is only yards away. And it’s not far from Oxford, so I could pop over and see you. Bring you flowers or something,’ she added vaguely. Bridget taught at one of the oldest colleges in Oxford, and lived in a pleasant semi in Summertown.
Loretta wasn’t enthusiastic. A dedicated city dweller, she found it hard to imagine what she would do with herself stuck out in Oxfordshire. No cinemas – she was used to popping into the Screen on the Green just down the road; no restaurants; no bookshops within walking distance: she would be mad with boredom in days. On the other hand, she didn’t want to appear ungrateful.
‘What’s it like, this cottage?’ she asked non-committally.
‘Small, but then you wouldn’t be staying there for too long,’ Bridget said. ‘It’s a sort of one-up, one-down.’
‘Very small,’ Loretta observed disparagingly.
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br /> ‘All right, but it’s beautiful inside,’ Bridget persisted. ‘It was derelict for ages and then Clara did it up three or four years ago. She picked all the wallpaper and furniture, and she’s got exquisite taste. There’s a biggish kitchen-cum-living room downstairs, and it’s got a what d’you call it, one of those old stove things you cook on. And upstairs there’s a bedroom with a wonderful view across the valley. It’s even got a desk, in case you can’t tear yourself away from work completely. You could get on with your Edith Wharton book – oh dear, I suppose I shouldn’t have mentioned that.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ mumbled Loretta, pushing away thoughts about her much-delayed work on the American writer. She had enough troubles on her plate without adding that one. ‘It’s very kind of you to go to all this trouble, but how can I take time off with finals coming up?’
‘I thought you didn’t have any choice,’ Bridget countered. ‘I thought you said your GP had signed you off. Don’t you want to get better?’
‘Yes, but there’s still the money problem,’ Loretta persisted weakly, admitting the force of Bridget’s argument.
‘Oh, but that’s the best part of it! Didn’t I explain? You can have the cottage for nothing.’ She paused to let these words have their effect. ‘Wayne thing has paid the rent till the end of July and Clara says she’s damned if she’s giving it back, all the money he’s going to make from this lecture tour. Just think, flying round America to talk about that old bore and getting paid for it!’
It wasn’t dear from Bridget’s tone whether her incredulity stemmed from her distaste for modern literature – she tended to the view that nothing of much interest had been written since the demise of George Eliot – or from a feminist disgust for Hemingway’s male chauvinism.
‘Anyway,’ she added, returning to the point at issue, ‘you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth?’
Loretta felt her resistance crumbling. It was true that she didn’t have much desire to sample rural life, but a calculation on the back of an envelope that morning had been enough to demonstrate she couldn’t afford a real holiday, by which she meant a leisurely trip to Venice by train or a month in Tuscany.
‘All right, you’ve talked me into it. You’d better give me Clara’s number.’ She reached across to the table for a pen. ‘And thanks, Bridget,’ she added, fearing that her response so far to her friend’s offer had been little short of churlish.
When Loretta put the phone down, Tracey looked at her with raised eyebrows, visibly hostile.
‘What was all that about then?’ he asked in a sulky voice. ‘I suppose she’s booked you into a rest home for vegetarian lesbians? With basket-weaving classes and radical flower arranging?’
Loretta laughed for the first time that day.
‘How did you guess? And I’m afraid that you, my love, will have to be on your way. I have to arrive first thing if I’m going to sign up for the refresher course in man-eating. How much do I owe you for the takeaway?’
She shooed a reluctant Tracey out of her flat, determined not to listen to another word of his complaints about his love life.
‘But how will I get hold of you?’ he called up the stairs, turning to peer up at her.
Loretta realized she didn’t even know whether Clara’s cottage was on the phone.
‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you,’ she shouted cheerfully.
The slamming of the street door two floors below told Loretta that her sally had not been well received. She shrugged, crossed the landing and went back into her flat, looking at her watch as she did so. It was just after ten and she wondered whether it was too late to ring Clara Wolstone-croft. On balance she decided that it was. The woman was a stranger, and her habits entirely unknown to Loretta; for all she knew, people kept different hours in the country. And though she was feeling more light-hearted than she had for days, the prospect of an early night was decidedly appealing. Thinking that she’d watch a few minutes of News at Ten before retiring, Loretta went into the drawing room and was about to switch on the television when the phone rang again.
‘Loretta Lawson?’ The woman’s voice was brisk and upper middle class, not one that Loretta recognized. ‘Ah, good,’ she said when Loretta had identified herself. ‘So glad to have caught you. You weren’t in bed, I hope? Clara Wolstonecroft here, I’m a friend of Bridget Bennett’s. Has she spoken to you?’
Loretta murmured that she had.
‘I thought so. I tried your number earlier and it was engaged. She’s told you about the cottage?’
Clara’s diction was loud and clear, as if she was used to communicating with foreigners whose grasp of English could not be relied upon. Loretta had a momentary flashback to her schooldays when she had habitually been addressed in this manner by her rather grand Latin teacher. She struggled to repel the vision of herself in bottle-green uniform that Clara had unknowingly conjured up.
‘So do you think you might be able to move in for a few weeks? Actually’ – Clara’s voice dropped to a tone that was probably intended to be confiding – ‘you’d be doing me the most tremendous favour. It’s a trifle delicate, as a matter of fact. The thing is – goodness, how thoughtless of me, bothering you with all my problems when you’re feeling like a squashed hedgehog! My niece had glandular fever once, she looked quite appalling. How about it?’
‘It’s very kind of you ...’ Loretta began, her doubts about the project suddenly returning. Clara’s eagerness to have her as a tenant, combined with the mysterious reference to a ‘tremendous favour’, had unnerved her. Did Clara have an ulterior motive for wanting her there? And what could it be? Loretta was still trying to frame a tactful inquiry that might elicit answers to these questions when Clara interrupted her.
‘That’s settled then,’ she announced, either misinterpreting Loretta’s hesitant response or pretending that she had. ‘How soon can you move in? Is Saturday all right? Let’s make it Saturday – Wayne’s moving out in the morning, thank God, and I’ll invite some of the neighbours round to supper to meet you. We don’t want you to be lonely! Come around five, that’ll give Mrs Abbott time to clear up the mess in the cottage. By the way, you don’t have any unusual hobbies, do you?’
Loretta said that she didn’t, even more perplexed. What on earth had her predecessor as Clara’s tenant been up to? All she’d gathered about Wayne was that he was American and lectured on Ernest Hemingway: did that offer any clue? Casting her mind back to her meagre store of knowledge on Hemingway, the first thing Loretta came up with was bull-fighting, which was obviously out; it seemed highly unlikely that Wayne had rustled a local cow and made passes at it with his gown in the garden outside the cottage. The other pastimes she associated with Hemingway, drinking and shooting, seemed much more possible. Wrinkling her nose, Loretta hoped she wouldn’t find a cache of empty bottles under the bed, or, even worse, the remains – feathers perhaps? – of any harmless creature Wayne had blasted out of the sky. Deciding that these reflections were further evidence of her feverish state, Loretta turned to the business of taking down Clara’s instructions on how to get to her house to collect keys to the cottage. Ten minutes later she went to bed, more than a little concerned about what to expect from her hastily arranged visit to Oxfordshire.
Moving out of London at three days’ notice, even for a short period, posed more problems than Loretta had anticipated. There were discussions at college as to how her work should be shared out among colleagues over the next few weeks; clothes to be cleaned and packed (a task made all the more difficult by Loretta’s resistance to what she thought of as ‘country’ clothes and their consequent absence from her wardrobe); books to be returned and borrowed from the London Library; and arrangements to be made with her downstairs neighbour to water plants and forward mail. She was quite relieved when she shut the front door of her flat on Saturday morning and carried her bags down to her white Panda. She had arranged to stop for lunch at an Indian restaurant in Holloway Road with a friend from her depa
rtment, and it was just after three when she finally set off for Clara’s.
The weather was warm and sunny, just as it should be but rarely is in mid-May, and she was in high spirits. These slumped suddenly on the M40 just beyond High Wycombe as a bout of tiredness combined with an unwelcome thought: she had not travelled along this road since the previous autumn, when she’d had a brief and exceedingly painful affair with someone she’d met at Bridget’s house in Oxford. She wondered fretfully whether this was an omen for the present trip, then laughed at herself. Usually the least superstitious of people, she had recently discovered a morbid tendency, which she attributed to her illness, to seek out signs and coincidences. Pop music was the answer to this non-sense, she decided; picking up a tape from the parcel shelf, she pushed it into the cassette player and filled the car with Tina Turner. She sang along happily, and in no time at all she was at the end of the motorway and had spotted the right turn off the A40 to Forest Hill.
Turning off the main road, Loretta drove along a twisting lane through the village and found herself in what seemed like another world. The hedgerows to either side groaned under a weight of white blossom, and the fields were a patchwork of bright and mossy greens. She passed thatched cottages so overgrown with lilac and white flowers that they themselves might have been rooted to the spot. A herd of long-horned cattle gazed incuriously at her from a field; one of them, larger than the rest, rubbed his head patiently against the top strand of the wire fence. A couple of miles further into this paradise Loretta saw a road to her right and a sign pointing along it to the village of Flitwell. Although this was Clara’s postal address, Loretta followed her instructions and drove on, keeping an eye out for the narrow lane which apparently preceded the house. In the event, she saw the house first, a long and slightly forbidding building standing alone on the right-hand side of the road, flanked on either side by trees. The lane, down which Loretta had been told to drive, was so overhung that it looked like the entrance to a tunnel; the diminution of light when the car began to make its way down the narrow hill was startling. At the bottom she saw a dusty lay-by to her left, empty even though it was large enough for several cars, and parked. Deciding to leave her luggage in the car for the time being she made her way back up the hill. It was steep, and she found herself panting before she reached the top. Turning right at the main road, she stopped for a moment to get her breath back and take in the details of Clara’s house. She was in the right place; a modest wooden sign above the front door bore the name ‘Baldwin’s’. Loretta wondered whether it had been built, or at least owned, by someone of that name. A member of Clara’s family, perhaps? The house was low and, had it not been constructed of a honey-coloured stone which Loretta took to be local, might well have appeared – unfriendly? It seemed the wrong sort of word to apply to a house, but the building certainly hadn’t been designed to impress the visitor with its open charm. It was asymmetrical in shape, the front door and window to each side being bunched at one end, next to the lane. To the left, a blank wall stretched for several yards. It looked, in fact, as though a barn and a house had lurched drunkenly together after some bucolic revel and failed to part. The upper storey showed even less evidence that it was part of a dwelling; only one window, situated directly above the front door, provided a break in the façade. Loretta wondered if the builder had been particularly unsociable, or whether he had simply intended to shield his affairs from the gaze of passers-by. Not that there could be many of those; peering in both directions, she noticed that Baldwin’s was the only house in sight.
